Wish You Were Here
by hamlet
Summary: [in progress] slash, disturbing content.
1. so you think you can tell the difference...

Based on listening to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" one too many times. Nothing here belongs to me, but you knew that already.   
  


So right now I'm watching the light do to him all the things I want to, from across the room. It kisses all the contours of his face, sharp lines like ice. Yes. That would suit him, cheekbones and slightly damp lips, all carved out of ice. I'd like to kiss him and see if he melts beneath my lips. I'm always warm, like I'm running a constant fever. Sometimes we're talking or eating and some part of my bare skin will brush against his, and I'll panic, because in all honesty our temperature's are so different and he's so cold I think I'm going to melt straight through his skin, trails of water dripping everywhere. It's a scary thought. 

It's a hot day, sunlight streaming everywhere, and the light is still on him, pooling into the bruise coloured hollows around his eyes, he hasn't been sleeping, just like me, and his nose and _fuck. _His mouth opens to speak and the light gets in there, it's all sharp teeth and damp red (has he been melting from the inside?), red like the inside of a nearly raw steak or a dead animal on the side of the road that isn't rotten yet and can still taste life. I want to tell him not to stay out in the light because I did, and now it's stuck in my skin and I'm bleached a golden-brown. He should stay pale, you really can't be made of ice if you go sunbathing all the time. His mouth is still open now, damn, because he's talking at me and I'm staring. 

My brain makes noise. 

I ask him to repeat what he says. And he gives me that amused look he'd never admit to, the one that means _Zell, you are _such_ a dork._   
  
  


Now it's later and I'm in my room, sitting on the floor with my back against my bed. I'm cradling a book open in my lap and reading it while half-aware, just letting the words slide over me. 

I thought Quistis ws going to have a heart attack and fall down the stairs (and then maybe _he'd_ come running for her like he wouldn't for me, blood all over his pristine white skin from her smashed in face) when I asked for some "literature." 

_To impress the laydeez,_ I had lied. _Can you give me some good stuff? Something that doesn't give me a brain aneurysm?_

Unfortunate phrase, it just popped out. It left me wondering what would happen if I had an aneurysm and Quistis had a heart attack, would _he _cry? Would he be heartbroken and cry ice water all over our graves? I doubt it. Either way, Quistis remained in good health and gave me some books in return for my lame excuse. I think she thought I wanted to impress the girl from the library. In truth, all I wanted was a way of getting to sleep that didn't involve magic, and nothing puts me to sleep faster than pages and pages of words I don't really understand. 

That was, what, a month ago? Two months? Three. It's nearly Spring again, we're coming out of Winter, _his _season. Time flies when you don't sleep much- you do more and it seems like there's less days. When there's light it goes by in a flurry of snow and rain and weather. Blood on the floor and the white sinks in the toilets when another student gets into a fistfight or just gives up on breathing, Whenever _he_ touches me my heart stops and it doesn't start beating again until I junction Quez's electricity through my veins. Nights go slower. I tend not to sleep if I can avoid it. I'm used to it, at first it was an extention of my "natural energy" (I was a hyperactive little bitch, climbing up the walls), as the doctors put it. Now I seem to have calmed down, and instead of staying up all night because I don't want to stop bouncing on the bed, it's because I don't want to _dream._

This night is agonizingly slow, because the book I'm reading is poetry. "The Wasteland." _I will show you terror in a handful of dust. Come in under the shadow of this red rock. _All straight over my head. 

Some books Quistis gave me were alright. The Catcher In The Rye, I read that a few times because it was unusual for me to read something I really _got, _and Catch-22 cracked me up. I should've shown it to _him._ It's a book about whores and the military. What's there not to love? One of them, though, 1984, was creepy. For a start, I had to keep going back to re-read the page and puzzle out the longer words, like "proletariat," and "abolished." And Room 101, that stuck with me for a long time. I kept wondering, what would my personal nightmare be? Would it be enough to make me stop loving or lusting the person I needed? 

At about ten past three I give in and climb into bed, still thinking. And I dream.   


(I'm strapped onto a white stretcher, a white room, spread-eagled, and this is Room 101. They're trying to get a confession from me, and they're showing me my personal terror. It's small, oh god, it's in _his hand_, and I don't want to see, but my eyes are frozen open. They tear up and blood wells up and runs down my side my fingernails are scraping bloodied chunks out of my palm. I look and, oh god, it's my terror, and it's not dust in his hand, it's ice.)   
  



	2. we're just two lost souls swimming in a ...

A/N: This is a nasty one. Rated R for semi-explicit naughtiness and disturbing content. 

Chapter title is, once again, from Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Nothing here belongs to me.   
  
  


Chapter Two   
(we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl) 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_He knows. Of course he knows. How could he not? Half the Garden is in love with him. Either way, I hate him. I hate him if he doesn't know for being so fucking stupid and I hate him if he does for ignoring it. I hate him, I hate him and I want him so much that it makes me shake and burn on the inside and--_

I cut that particular thought off mid-flow and concentrated on the flow of conversation around me. Nida is chastising a younger student for throwing french fries into the air and catching them in his mouth. 

_I want to tie him up and kiss him and leave him there crying. Bleeding ice and water and needing me._

I savour that thought and hold it (him) in my head. Next to me Nida is chattering away. _Fuck off, _I think at him as hard as I can, _I'm busy obsessing over here. _The longer I inwardly tell him to go away or shut up, the longer he keeps talking. Cause and effect. I stop thinking and just read the graffiti carved into the side of the table. You can't really see it, but if you run your finger hard enough along the surface, you can feel it. I press my fingers down. _Straight line, curved v shape (a heart), two curves (S), a circle with a line jutting out near the side (Q), half a circle (U.)_

I push my chair away from the table like it's made of hot coal and my fingertips are blistering. For a second I can _see _blisters form on my hand, stretching down my bronze coloured arm, biting down and down until they hit bone and muscle, all from coming into contact with the first three letters of his name.   
  
  
  


One of these days, I'm gonna implode. Maybe it'll be the next time he brushes past me in the hallways and in my mind he isn't walking away lost in his own personal world, he's slamming me against the walls and kissing me roughly, biting my bottom lip   
or shoving his tongue between my lips. 

I store all of these thoughts quietly at the back of my head, a few brief snapshots of what is never going to happen for constant replay: him, whispering my name in my ear, kissing my neck, killing me slowly and painfully, tipping me apart, freezing me to death, doing _something._

The feeling that one day all the electricity and energy is going to pour out of me and I'll burn to death gets deeper as Nida pours me another glass, spilling most of it onto my floor. I'm never gonna get the smell of vodka out. I slam it back at the same time as he does, trying not to choke on taste. For a second my vision blurs and Nida has paler skin, darker eyes, and nearly the right shade of hair. I close my eyes and start to drink from one of the semi-full bottles (somewhere along the way, it seems, I decided to show off about how well I could open bottles of vodka with my hands, and it progressed from there).We drink in silence and the liquid burns my throat, like the acid you get when you're about to be sick, and suddenly I can't see straight. 

Nida leans into me, so warm, and for the first time I wonder about the wisdom about inviting him on a late-night binge in my room. _Zell_, he slurs, _you're _so_ goddam beautiful._

To my credit I don't choke on my drink, instead I swallow it and slip a little further down the spiral, because suddenly my arms around his waist and I'm kissing him. Then one of us lunges, there's a dull thud as we hit the floor, and the empty glasses and bottles smash together on the floor and his lips are on mine, somehow his tongue is in my mouth, strong and slick muscle. The vodka seeps into the carpet and I think _Quistis is going to know I got drunk, I am _so fucked_._

Then there's not time to think, and I don't care about the glass that's cutting into my back, because Nida is close enough to being _him. _His fingernails are scraping roughly down my chest, down and down, past my stomach, and then I'm writhing under him and moaning shamelessly.   
  
  


The next morning I wake up, and miracles will never cease, because we made it into bed. The sheets are spotted with red- the glass cut us or his fingernails did. 

Nida rolls over in his sleep and presses close to me, looking blood-flecked and surprisingly real and very much like Nida. I stare dumbly at him until I realise he's not going to disappear. I close my eyes. I count to ten and open them again, and Nida remains depressingly solid. He whimpers in his sleep and starts to wake up slightly, throwing an arm around my waist and nuzzling against my neck. 

I suddenly loathe myself.   
  
  
  
  



End file.
